Kara Blackburn is a Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an affiliate of MIT Sloan's Leadership Center. 

At MIT, Blackburn co-created and teaches Leading the Way: Perspectives on Advancing Equity and Inclusion. This course address both individual skills and organizational strategies for advancing equity and inclusion within workplaces and increasing the representation of historically marginalized groups in key positions. Blackburn also created and teaches Tough Conversations: Science, Strategies & Skills that equips students with a framework for initiating and navigating hard conversations at work. Blackburn teaches Communication for Leaders and runs the accompanying Communications Lab for full-time MBA students. Additionally, she teaches in MIT Sloan’s Executive Education programs. 

Also at MIT Sloan, Blackburn has mentored teams in the Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab), and China and India Lab courses, and has been the faculty lead for study tours in South America and Africa. She has traveled on behalf of the MIT faculty to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Botswana, Namibia, Vietnam, Thailand, and China.

Blackburn was awarded the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT Sloan in 2019. She was also a recipient of the 2020 Teaching with Digital Technology Award and won MIT Sloan’s Teacher of the Year in 2023.